It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth by Steve Bluestein

turn...step by step...inch by inch... "When were you going to tell us that?"  And she changes the subject. "Why aren't you on the bus?" Me, "What bus?" her "The bus to the hotel..." It appears that in my nervous anxiety I had missed the announcement that the buses would take us to a hotel where we would spend the night. 
     
    I run up to the buses where 358 people hate my guts because they had been waiting an hour for me. I get on the bus and it's like I'm radioactive... no one talks to me; no one makes eye contact. I'm a man without a country.  We get to the hotel in about 20 minutes. I get off the bus and it's then that I see we are not on the strip... we are like in Henderson or Elk Balls or some small town just OUTSIDE Las Vegas.... no shows, no dinner...nada.  I look at the hotel and it looks strange. What is it about this place? Holly Shit! It's under construction. They were putting us up in a brand new hotel that was under construction. I swear to God!
     
    I enter the Casino and it's empty of all furniture and gaming machines, except on the wall is written, "Slots Here" or "Kino Board Here". At the end of this football field size room is check-in desk...with one man...one very...old... man. It looks like we have awaken him from a long nap...  Rip Van Winkle is checking us in. He's alone and 359 people check in at the same time... and he's all alone and slow.  He hands out the keys and, person-by-person, they leave the lobby. The line for keys stretched from the check-in desk, through the empty casino, out to the bus... guess where I am? Dr. Fortune has kissed me again; I'm tenth from the end. About this time I start to notice that people who have gotten their keys are now returning. It appears the keys were put in the boxes today and someone put them in "one slot off" so 359 people went up to their rooms and then 359 came back down. The keys didn't work.  Have you seen the pictures of the fall of Saigon? That's what this lobby looked like, people screaming and shoving, Asian women crying, small children hanging from helicopter doors. It was a living hell.
     
    At 4:00 a.m. I get to my room.  Room? Ha! It wasn't finished. There was a bed wrapped in plastic and a phone. In the bathroom... a toilet no sinks.  At this point I am so exhausted I fall on the bed, plastic and all, and I'm out like a light.  Within 25 minutes the phone rings. "Wake UP call. The buses are leaving for the airport".  Ya know how some people can take a 20-minute catnap and are refreshed? I'm not one of those people. You wake me after a 20-minute nap and I'm like Terry Shiavo.  I can't focus, I can't walk, I'm incoherent.
     
    I drag myself down to the lobby and crawl on to the bus. Check in at the airport is smooth; we're on the plane in 30 minutes...  and sit there for three hours. No food. No movie. Nothing... just my delusional self and my sleep depraved inner voice, "If I had a box cutter I could take over the cockpit and fly this fucker home".
     
    Finally, after 28 hours, we land in LA. The flight attendant gets on the speaker and says, "Thank you for flying United. I know you have many choices and we thank you for choosing....  oh forget it.... let them fire me."  And the entire plane, including myself, screams with laughter and breaks into applause. 
     
    I got 300 dollars for pain and suffering.
     
    March 20, 2006 - MY LAST VEGAS GIG
     
    Working in front of live audiences is what I live for. I love the work... LOVE IT.  I have more fun in those 45 minutes on stage than an alcoholic in a brewery. It's the other 23 hours and 15 minutes that make me want to hang myself from the room service cart.
     
    I forgot. I just forgot what Vega was like. The whole city is one big "cousins who fuck" convention. I've never seen anything like it. Isn't anyone rotating the crops? Doesn't anyone exercise? If Vegas is a cross section of our country, we ARE the ugly Americans.
     
    Let's start with the hotel room. I live in a big house.